Northern Ireland: from the Troubles to a tourism hotspot

The crumbling 19th-century castle on a derelict farm in what was nicknamed “bandit country” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles had fallen into such disrepair that its last inhabitant, unable to afford the upkeep, had moved into a caravan outside.

The place certainly didn’t look much, but what Mick Boyle spotted in the ramshackle ruin at the foot of the Slieve Gullion mountain near where his parents had grown up — and where he himself was born, before the family emigrated to Australia in 1968 as “Ten Pound Poms” — was a future luxury hotel.

“You needed a bit of an eye to see what it could be,” said Boyle, an engineer who runs an infrastructure construction company, Abergeldie Complex Infrastructure, in Sydney with his wife Robin, but had never severed ties with the place where he lived until he was four.

“The hard part was convincing bankers that anyone would come to a four- or five-star hotel in South Armagh,” added Boyle, who bought the site for £1.2mn in 2013 and has sunk a further £12mn into developing it.

Little wonder the bankers were sceptical. The South Armagh scenery is stunning — a mecca for trekkers — and the expansive green feels limitless and a world away from the bustle of Belfast or Dublin, just over an hour’s drive north or south. But the castle is also only five miles from the Irish border that was fortified with barbed wire and watchtowers during three decades of conflict — a time when the area’s hills and lanes were the border badlands, notorious for the republican paramilitary snipers who targeted the British army in a bloody campaign to reunite the island.

Today, Northern Ireland is a place transformed as it marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement peace deal, signed on April 10 1998. The conflict, fought also by loyalist paramilitaries battling to keep the region in the UK, has ended, and the throb of British army helicopters in the skies has long gone. The border is invisible and Boyle’s castle, plus the coach house and mill he renovated and extended into a hotel and spa on a rolling woodland estate, is a symbol of the region’s tourist revitalisation.

Such places are helping the region to write a new narrative by reclaiming one-time Troubles hotspots and reinventing their dark associations with the past — proof that Northern Ireland does not have to be a hostage to history.

“Lots of people perceive Northern Ireland to be dull, dreary, Presbyterian in its outlook, but it’s not that way at all,” said John McGrillen, chief executive of Tourism NI. “One of the success stories of the Good Friday Agreement has been the tourism industry.”

From a corner of the UK that no one wanted to visit back then, tourism has taken off, undeterred by sporadic attacks on police that prompted the UK’s MI5 intelligence agency to raise the security threat ahead of the upcoming visit of US president Joe Biden.

“The risk to a tourist is negligible,” maintains McGrillen: he says statistics show Belfast poses no greater threat than other cities, like Manchester, London, Paris, Nice and Istanbul, that have suffered terror attacks. “We all continue to visit these great cities and Belfast will be no different.”

At Boyle’s Killeavy Castle Estate, guests can sleep in four-poster beds, bathe in a crenellated tower and dine, relax and party in private luxury in the elegantly restored splendour of the Grade A listed castle. Alternatively, they can opt for the minimalist modern decor of the 45-room hotel, with its giant picture windows looking on to the countryside, or a self-catering Gatelodge. Electric bikes and hiking boots are available so that they can explore.

Visitors are also looking further afield. Take Colin Glen, a 200-acre forest adventure park in West Belfast where you can whizz at 50mph down Ireland’s longest zip line or tackle a high rope course and climbing wall, bobsleigh-style alpine coaster, nine-hole golf course and high-tech driving range, play laser tag or take a Gruffalo-themed walk with children.

It used to be a rubbish dump in a dangerous republican area beside interfaces — flashpoint areas where the city’s often still segregated unionist and nationalist communities touch. A nearby hotel, where The Rolling Stones once stayed, was bombed; a heavily fortified police compound erected in its place was itself targeted with mortars.

“We have changed the look and feel and atmosphere and appeal of the place — we have overcome the preconception people had of Colin Glen as being a no-go area and made it . . . something local people can be proud of,” said Colin O’Neill, chief executive of the Colin Glen Trust.

A gateway to the Belfast hills, it is an urban gem, but also a social enterprise supporting environmental protection and development in one of the city’s most deprived areas. “We have a story to tell,” O’Neill said. “This isn’t just a fairground attraction — there’s a reason for choosing here — you’re supporting the environment and local people.”

Funding has been a challenge but Colin Glen’s attractions now receive 200,000 paying visitors a year — a quarter of them from outside Northern Ireland.

Overall, Northern Ireland attracted 3mn visitors in 2019, pre-Covid, up from 1.98mn in 2012. McGrillen is confident the region can double 2019’s record £1bn tourist spend in the next decade, as visitors arriving into Dublin, plus Irish people who have never or rarely crossed the border, are increasingly lured north.

They may come for the region’s traditional attractions — such as the basalt hexagonal stepping stones of the Giant’s Causeway; the newly upgraded Titanic Belfast museum; the eerily entwined Dark Hedges and other landscapes made famous by Game of Thrones; Bushmills, the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world; and the walled city of Londonderry, also known as Derry. Or it may be golf tourism in a region that hosts the British Open in 2025. But they like what else they discover.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the numbers of young families coming,” noted McGrillen. “The younger generation don’t carry the same memories or have the same perceptions of the place [from the Troubles] — they’re not scarred in the same way.”

That has helped put the Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast on the map, despite the imposing basalt and sandstone building’s location by the Troubles’ notorious “murder mile” — so nicknamed because of all the attacks there.

Initially, the visitor experience, which opened in 2012, was seen as “dark tourism”, acknowledges manager Phelim Devlin. “But if you ask anyone in the world what’s the first thing you think of when you think of Belfast, nine times out of 10, the Troubles are going to be up there.”

And that inevitably means “The Crum” — a working prison from 1846 until 1996, despite tiny, icy cells without toilets that had to be slopped out by inmates every morning. “All the prisoners you can think of associated with the Troubles were in here,” Devlin said — including Bobby Sands, who later led a hunger strike by Irish Republican Army members in the Maze prison’s H-blocks in 1981 in which he and nine others died.

The gaol tour — as interesting as Alcatraz — includes an excellently succinct animated cartoon whistle-stop explainer of the Troubles and plenty of the grisly history of inmates and executions at an institution designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, architect of Queen’s University.

The gaol has teamed up with local “Troubles tours” of Belfast’s famous murals to victims and martyrs of the conflict, guided by former combatants from both sides. But it also hosts concerts and events, and this October “A-Wing”, where Troubles inmates were housed, will open its doors as a working distillery reviving J&J McConnell’s Irish Whisky, founded in 1776.

For John Kelly, chief executive of the US-backed Belfast Distillery Company that’s behind the brand’s revival, it was not just about bringing whiskey production back to Belfast, which had dominated the island’s output of the spirit in the early 19th century: “It was about bringing something back to this part of North Belfast.” The school he went to as a boy backed on to the gaol and he remembers helicopters flying over three times a day during the Troubles; now he wants to employ locals at the distillery and visitor centre to “play the part we can” in reintegrating the socially disadvantaged area.

Likewise, Michele Bryans, chief executive of the EastSide Partnership, which is behind regenerating — but not gentrifying — working-class East Belfast, says her goal is simple: “We want to bring a tourism product that is authentic into the heart of East Belfast — not necessarily the shiny things Belfast is known for, but a way for people to get under the skin of here a bit.”

The “East Side” is a part of town near the Harland & Wolff shipyard that built the Titanic, and is also known for its murals to loyalist paramilitaries. The Partnership, a local charity, has developed the 16km Connswater Community Greenway, inspired by New York’s High Line; the CS Lewis Square honouring the Belfast-born creator of Narnia; an Airbnb in football star George Best’s childhood home; and a trendy restaurant in a former shipping container.

The area also boasts a brewery as well as the Banana Block, an events space in a former linen mill, so named because of its connection with William Richardson, the gardener who managed to grow the fruit in industrial East Belfast more than a century ago.

“People want to see the murals [around here] but we want to tell the whole story, to inspire people to come here. You can have both,” Bryans says.

A possible Netflix Narnia adaptation offers more prospects and the EastSide Partnership is seeking planning permission for a hip container hotel. O’Neill at Colin Glen is likewise seeking to bring innovations, including a system of steel cables from which bicycles will be hung so that guests can ride around the treetops.

Back at Killeavy Castle, Boyle plans to plant 200 acres of his estate with native trees.

“We’ve got about half [the estate] restored,” he said. “It’s a pretty good metaphor for Northern Ireland since the Troubles: we’ve rebuilt a lot, but we’ve still got more to do.”

Jude Webber is the FT’s Ireland correspondent

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